VICTOR SHARPE: THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

It is what Barack Obama didn’t say in his second Inaugural Address that was the most significant. He came close to turning his back on most of the world as he delivered a fiercely liberal and avowedly socialist vision of what he wants America to be.

He said, “A decade of war is now ending.” But almost immediately after he mouthed that meaningless phrase Iraq was convulsed by yet more bloodshed between Sunni and Shiite Arabs. North Korea flexed its nuclear muscles again despite all the empty words coming from the U.S. and the western powers. And Iran remained defiant in thumbing its nose at the West and the United Nations as it proceeds in its nightmarish ambition to obtain the Bomb.

Meanwhile Algeria is in flames, as is Mali, and the president’s boast that Al Qaida is on the run has become a sick joke. Much of North Africa, including Egypt, Libya and Tunisia fall increasingly under its grim influence as they do under that other Muslim terror group; the Muslim Brotherhood. And what does the Obama Administration do. Why, it sends F16s and Abram tanks to Egypt’s anti-American and anti-western Muslim Brotherhood regime.

Jihadism and Islamism in their most brutal and barbaric manifestations are sweeping across much of the globe, emboldened as they undoubtedly are by the pathetic response from the State Department and the White House over the sacking of our Benghazi consulate, the slaughter of our ambassador and the three other brave Americans. And still none of the perpetrators have been either eliminated or captured and no State Department staff have been punished in any way, shape or form.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama is pressing ahead with the appointment of Chuck Hagel as Defense Secretary, a man who shares the same world view as the president and who stands ready to carry out Obama’s orders to avoid taking any meaningful action against our Islamic enemies, while at the same time decimating our armed forces and our ability to be a meaningful force for stability and safety in an ever more perilous world.

The United States, I fear, will become increasingly mocked by our enemies as they consider our growing military and diplomatic impotence as the silence of the lambs. How ironic then that President Obama said, “America will remain the anchor of strong alliances in every corner of the globe.” If it was not so tragic, it would be funny.